1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic endoscopic system having an endoscope provided with a solid-state imaging element, and particularly to a device for correcting variations in the color reproductivity of the solid-state imaging element.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, in an endoscopic inspection, a plurality of endoscopes are connected to one endoscopic system. In a large hospital, however, a plurality of the endoscopes are used in combination with a plurality of endoscopic systems in accordance with inspected portions etc. The combination between the endoscopes and the endoscopic systems is not fixed but selected arbitrarily depending on situations. Therefore, if no color correction is carried out on the endoscopic systems, the color reproductivity of the systems may differ from one another depending on the combination. The color reproductivity and its recording are very important subjects in clinical sites. Due to this, there have been proposed various devices such as a device which allows a user to change the amplitudes of red and blue color signals, and a device which has an internal memory for allowing a user to store therein correction values to be obtained after the user executes a color correction operation for all the combinations between endoscopes and endoscopic systems.
According to the device which allows a user to change only the amplitudes of red and blue color signals to correct color, data to be obtained may be affected by the subjectivity of the user (the operator). Therefore, an objective result is hardly obtained when the data are compared with each other according to the elapse of time by the same operator, or when the data are compared with data obtained by another operator.
On the other hand, according to the device which has an internal memory for allowing the user to store therein correction values to be obtained after the user executes a color correction operation for all the combinations between endoscopes and endoscopic systems, there may be no problem in connection with the objectivity in the color reproductivity, but it requires the user for bothersome work that the user shall obtain correction values for all the possible combinations between the endoscopes and the endoscopic systems and write the obtained correction values into the memory. If new endoscopes are purchased additionally, the above-mentioned work shall be reiterated for all the possible combinations between the newly purchased endoscopes and the endoscopic systems. Further, there is a drawback that even an endoscope of the same kind but brought from another place shall be subjected to the color correction before use because a color correction value for the brought endoscope is not stored in the memory of the endoscopic system.